A welcome visitor to gardens, and sure sign summer is coming to an end when seen in large groups, monarch butterflies are a staple of St. Louis scenery and landscapes across the country. But their numbers are dwindling, scientists say. Shrinking Numbers and Endangered Status In July 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature,…
Tag: Butterfly House
Remote Research: Single Bug Dad
Throughout the world, closures and lockdowns aimed to stop the spread of COVID-19 have disrupted many people’s lives and work. As a global institution, the Missouri Botanical Garden does research around the world, making travel restrictions a major hindrance. The “stay at home” order means staff has lost access to the Garden’s herbarium and labs,…
The Miracle of Metamorphosis
An exciting transformation is coming to the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House Entomology Lab If you’ve visited the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in its first two decades of operation, you’ve likely marveled at the beautiful butterfly diversity on display, but have you ever wondered how these colorful creatures come to fill the Butterfly House’s…
Flora, Fauna, and Fortune: Looking for Luck in Nature
For centuries, people have looked to nature for symbols of good fortune. Now the Blues are on the brink of making history, and fans across St. Louis are doing whatever they can to bring a little luck our way. It’s in honor of these noble efforts that we offer this brief history of a few…
Butterflies Need Trees Too
Autumn is the perfect time to celebrate Tree Week. We encourage you to not only take a stroll and enjoy the fall colors, but also take a moment to think about all the life these trees support. Among those branches are thousands of different invertebrates, including centipedes and beetles, cocoons and chrysalises. Some trees are…
Queen Butterflies Spotted in St. Louis
Late summer is the perfect time to view one of our area’s showiest pollinators, the monarch butterfly. But this year, it’s not the only royal visiting the St. Louis region. Tad Yankoski, Entomologist at the Butterfly House, says two queen butterflies (Danaus gilippus) have recently been spotted around town. The queen is a cousin of…
20 Ways to Experience the Butterfly House
It started small. The idea hatched in Evelyn E. Newman’s mind in 1993. Five short years later, the Butterfly House opened to the public at Faust Park in Chesterfield, Missouri, and visitors were introduced to the beauty and ecological importance of butterflies in a setting like no other. Shortly after opening its doors, the Butterfly…
Discover + Share: The Best of 2017
This year marked the first year for Discover + Share, a new blog from the Missouri Botanical Garden. Our goal was to give visitors a glimpse of the Garden most don’t often get to see or experience–to share our stories and help you learn a little more about the many facets of the Garden’s mission….
How to Build a Fairy Garden
Each November and December during its Winter Jewels celebration, the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House transforms into an enchanted wonderland complete with fierce dragons, noble nights, gnomes, and fairies. That might seem like a lot of magic to fit under the glass roof of the Butterfly House’s tropical conservatory, but some of these fanciful creations…
Mealworms’ Fascinating Feast
The Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House celebrates “all things creepy and crawly” every October as it transforms into the BOOterfly House, with a Scorpion Lair, Botanicals Gone Mad, and spectacular spiders. One special insect introduced last year will be making a return this October; the mealworm. Mealworms are darkling beetle larvae that are widely cultivated…
World-Traveling Butterflies
Where do the tropical butterflies that fill the Butterfly House Conservatory come from and how do they make it all the way to Missouri? To answer that question, we must first travel to Costa Rica. El Bosque Nuevo Beginning in 1995 in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, El Bosque Nuevo aimed to help preserve the rainforest and…
Butterfly House Collections Pair Plants with Pollinators
The Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House is known as a pollinators’ paradise, but it is also an extension of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s focus on innovative horticulture and beautiful displays. Two types of butterfly gardens were created over the course of the Butterfly House’s existence, the Conservatory and the Native Butterfly Garden, with the aim…